| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century. By J. Samuel Walker. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. xii, 168 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-520-22328-4.)

At one level, this is an excellent history of a difficult and emotional topic. J. Samuel Walker provides a clear and readable chronicle of the emergence of nuclear protection by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and other agencies in a context of extreme scientific uncertainty, conflicting interests, and growing public fears. The book is worth reading just for its lucid account of the problems surrounding the development of reliable scientific knowledge and for showing how scientific estimates of safety were developed in the absence of any certainty. One fascinating aspect of this account is the extent to which the radiation effects on the atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain hotly debated today. The effects of the accident at Chernobyl are also contested (except for thyroid cancers among children), even as it offers "a unique opportunity to gain a better understanding of the effects of radiation on a large population." Altogether, Walker demystifies scientific research and provides a great corrective to the simplistic view that science can be used to make clear and unambiguous risk decisions. . . .

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